Economies of Scope, Entry Deterrence and Welfare

This paper develops a model where the incumbent may expand to a related market to signal economies of scope and deter entry in the former market. We show that the incumbent only expands when scope economies are large enough. Thus expansion is a signal of larger economies of scope and, for certain pa...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: PIRES, CESALTINA PACHECO (author)
Other Authors: Catalão-Lopes, Margarida (author)
Format: article
Language:eng
Published: 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10174/10136
Country:Portugal
Oai:oai:dspace.uevora.pt:10174/10136
Description
Summary:This paper develops a model where the incumbent may expand to a related market to signal economies of scope and deter entry in the former market. We show that the incumbent only expands when scope economies are large enough. Thus expansion is a signal of larger economies of scope and, for certain parameter values, leads to entry deterrence. Although our game is twoperiod, the expansion strategy creates a long-term advantage. We further investigate the implications of prohibiting an entry-deterrent expansion. A major finding is that, in our model, this prohibition always decreases consumer surplus. In terms of global welfare, the impact is ambiguous but negative for many parameter values.